Antoine--
I purchased an Injectamatic Sleeper TAS a few years ago from Genesee
Scientific. It works exactly as described. My impression is that
flies wake up slightly more slowly than when they are anesthetized
with carbon dioxide (though much more quickly than ether anesthesia),
but I never found it to be a problem. I never had any reason to
think that nitric oxide was any more deleterious than carbon dioxide,
but I did not do any kind of careful study.
My only complaint about using the Sleeper unit is that the directions
indicate that it must be used intermittently for no more than one
minute at a time. I'm not quite sure why this is, or exactly how the
inventors expected users to apply this rule. The Sleeper comes with
a foot pedal to control a pump in the unit. I simply pressed the
foot pedal for awhile, stopped for a bit, pressed it some more,
etc. In this way, I could keep flies asleep for several minutes. I
don't think I hurt the gas generator doing this (though I burned out
a solenoid valve that I had to replace for ~$30). It took awhile to
get used to pressing the pedal rhythmically. Maybe the inventors
could provide some guidance on this issue. I never asked and maybe I
was doing things wrong......
The pump makes it more noisy than using CO2 and your labmates might
not like listening to it, but it's a reasonable alternative.
Kevin
__________________________________________________________
Kevin Cook, Ph.D. Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center
Department of Biology http://flystocks.bio.indiana.edu
Jordan Hall 142
Indiana University 812-856-1213
1001 E. Third St. 812-855-2577 (fax)
Bloomington, IN 47405-7005 kcook from bio.indiana.edu